#this is quite tmi i might delete later

[bandzboy]

i am so annoyed because i can’t sleep my nose keep getting blocked on one nostril and the itch on my throat doesn’t seem to go away and it’s just so annoying how even tho i am taking so many medicine and pills it’s like i am not getting any better and honestly i am about to cry 😭

[gojoest]

OMG ARE YOU ARAB ??

no i’m turkish :3 born raised and living in bulgaria tho !

anonymously (or not) ask me any question you’d like to know about me

[skullsandwineglasses]

Arsenal Military Academy (First Impressions - Eps 1-13)

I’m about a quarter of the way through, but I’m really enjoying it so far. The premise is simple: a 19-year old young woman disguises herself as her deceased brother and enrolls in the military academy. Like most dramas that take place during the pre-modern republican era, the main conflict and antagonist is usually about the threat of Japanese occupation. 

But this drama is more light-hearted than serious. The Japanese plot line looms in the background, but the main focus (so far) is about the FL’s training at the academy and the missions that the students go on and their interactions with each other. There are some really good comedic moments, and the drama has good pacing. 

The Female Lead - Xie Xiang (played by Bai Lu)

I’m going to be making comparisons to The Legends because the reason why I started this drama was to see Bai Lu and Xu Kai again. I know these two dramas are completely difference so it’s not fair to compare them, but I’m going to be talking about these differences. 

Xie Xiang is a watchable FL, but I think she’s missing that spark that would make her a memorable FL. She’s not as physically capable as her male counterparts, but she has the perseverance, wits, and martial arts skills that many of her peers lack. It’s a really standard character profile for a cross-dressing FL in a military academy, and tbh, it’s kind of boring. I’m not sure what would help elevate her character more, but it just feels like something’s missing. 

In comparison, the second FL has that spark. She’s more layered. She comes from a middle-class, well-to-do family, but chooses to be an entertainer. She’s arrogant, demanding, high maintenance, but she’s also protective of her friends and doesn’t hesitate to stand up to things she thinks is wrong. She’s a haughty firecracker, but what makes her admirable is how she isn’t afraid to be herself. I think it’s an interesting balance for a character to be obnoxiously full of themselves, but to also care about others. She’s probably the first SFL that I actually enjoy watching (even if she might be a potential love rival to the FL). 

The Male Lead - Gu Yanzhen (played by Xu Kai)

Speaking of someone who is obnoxiously full of themselves but still has the capacity to care for others, the ML is exactly this. In this drama, Xu Kai plays a character who is nearly the opposite of the character he played in The Legends. Here, Gu Yanzhen is a cheeky, mischievous, spoiled rich kid who loves flirting with women and causing trouble. He’s like an overgrown child (like when he’s jealous and purposely gets himself sick so that Xie Xiang would take care of him), but when he wants to do, he’s also able to show high levels of competence, maturity, and bravery. 

Xu Kai really stands out in this drama. He’s quite charming and adorable because he’s allowed to be more expressive. He mopes, teases, complains, smirks, worries, and yearns. Despite playing a noble, self-sacrificing, and devoted ML in The Legends, Xu Kai didn’t completely win me over then. Mostly because his character was a bit flat and so overdone in the xianxia genre. But seeing a different side of his acting in AMA has made him grow on me. 

It’s almost as if Xu Kai and Bai Lu switched personalities in this drama where he’s more outgoing, while she’s more reserved. He’s now the loud and impulsive one, while she’s the more conscientious one who wants to do something meaningful. 

The Chemistry

So far it’s been very one-sided. Gu Yanzhen figures out that she’s a girl early on and falls for her, while she still finds him intolerably annoying and is instead crushing on the second male lead. Because she doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, the chemistry is kind of lacking. If I hadn’t watched The Legends beforehand, I’m not sure if I would be onboard with this ship. 

The story is currently purposely set up so that we see that the ML and SFL are more compatible, and the FL and SFL are more compatible. Gu Yanzhen and the SFL are practically the same person, and they have a lot of playful bantering, so it’s kind of hard not to ship them. But I’m curious to see when the switch happens. We see that Xie Xiang is starting to slightly warm up to Gu Yanzhen, but Gu Yanzhen needs to mature a bit more before she changes her opinion of him. 

I’m also living for these stories where he figures out her true identity before everyone else and tries to help her protect her secret, but she’s completely clueless to it. The same things happened in The Legends, and the dynamic repeats itself here. 

The second ML is portrayed as being a perfect character. Mature, clever, kind, caring, righteous. It’s hard not to like him. I’m wondering if he already knows that Xie Xiang is a girl because of his glances, or if that’s because the director was purposely trying to make it ambiguous. At least at this point, he seems to be the best match for the FL, even though he currently likes his former classmate, who is actually working for the Japanese. 

The Plot

I like how there are a lot of intersecting characters, which helps expands the fictional world. The peripheral characters all somehow relate back to the main leads, so you can’t really skip their scenes because their stories connect somehow. 

The colour-grading, costuming, sets, and OST also help immerse you into the era. 

Despite being have a simple and stereotypical premise, it’s not easy to predict the endgame of the drama. You know that at some point, Xie Xiang’s identity will be revealed, but then what? After that point, the plot is going to take a turn because it’ll need a new conflict, which will be probably related to the Japanese, but you’re not sure what yet. The drama feels refreshing so far, but I also haven’t watched too many republican era dramas, so it’s not hard to impress me. 

Other anachronistic observations

In episode 1, when Xie Xiang uses the women’s restroom while dressed as a man and runs into the second FL (Qu Manting), Manting accuses her of trying to take pictures of her and demands that Xie Xiang take out her camera and delete/destroy the photos. It’s a minor point, but cameras in those days were huge and thus hard to hide, so it should have been obvious that Xie Xiang didn’t have a camera on her. 

In a later episode, Xie Xiang struggles to complete the obstacle course because she’s unwell, and while it’s not explicitly stated, I think we’re supposed to assume that it’s because of period cramps, and I applaud the drama for implying this (but it would have been even better if they made the implication more explicit). But ever since the drama started, I wondered about this. Even if someone didn’t have period cramps, how would you hide menstruation while living in the same room with someone? TMI, but when I was living with 4 other girls during uni, the garbage can in our bathroom would be filled with sanitary products during the same week every month. Women back then didn’t have the same sanitary products as we do now, but they still had to scrub and change cloths, like my mom did when she was younger. So realistically, Xie Xiang would have had to spend long periods of time (no pun intended) in the washroom to scrub her cloths. And after she did so, where did she dry them? 

Anyway, those are minor points. Overall, this drama is a fun watch, and I’m thankful that Xu Kai and Bai Lu got to collaborate again before the fandoms made things awkward as they do with any rumoured CP (*cough cough* Deng Lun and Yang Zi, and Cheng Yi and Yuan Bingyan). It’s as though the more chemistry two people have together in a drama, the less likely they’ll collaborate again because the fandoms will start to hate each other due to some misunderstanding and/or company management. The irony. So I guess the goal is to have low, platonic chemistry so that you don’t become enemies so as to leave the door open for future collaboration opportunities. Sorry, so that was bitter and a bit off tangent. I just have a lot of thoughts about the toxicity of fandom culture. 

[saybees]

Some rather personal and tmi stuff, but I feel like I need to get it out somewhere and I don’t have anyone I really feel I can talk to about this now. It’s very long.

I’d like to start by saying that if you’re reading this please don’t tell me to just dump him. It isn’t that simple and it just isn’t helpful to say that to me.

So Jon and I have had issues in the past with porn. Jon has a porn addiction. I didn’t discover this until maybe a year into our relationship when I walked into the bathroom one day and he was watching porn and masturbating. At first I was more shocked than anything and didn’t know how to react, but it quickly turned into feeling really hurt.

I tried to talk to him about it and told him that it bothered me that he was doing that and it made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and our sex was too boring for him. It made me feel so inadequate that he had to go somewhere else for that stuff. He didn’t see the issue with it and because porn has become so normalized in our society and he has maintained that he doesn’t understand why it’s an issue for me, despite that I have explained to him many times that it really bothers me and makes me feel shitty. It feels like cheating.

Eventually I asked him to leave the bathroom door open when he goes in there because I didn’t really trust him. That didn’t stop him, however, and he continued to masturbate to porn in the bathroom even though the door was cracked open. I caught him and was really upset. It hasn’t happened again since I caught him with the door open.

I can’t even count how many times we have had this conversation/argument. It just hurts a lot and I really am so tired of having this talk with him. I asked my therapist that I used to see if I was being unreasonable and she said I wasn’t. She fully agreed with me that I wasn’t asking too much of him to stop doing it.

He doesn’t do it at home anymore, but I’m pretty sure he does when he’s at work. He’ll take a washroom break and very likely will do it then because he accidentally let it slip recently that he still masturbates. He tried very hard to redirect and I pretended I didn’t notice, but it’s been eating at me.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if he didn’t have a porn problem. I just feel like he doesn’t find me attractive or sexy. We don’t have sex very often at all and I pretty much always have to initiate it, which reinforces those feelings that I’m not what he wants. I don’t feel sexy enough or pretty enough and I’ve always had issues with feeling like I have an ugly face so this really makes it worse.

He used to follow lots of Instagram models, but has since unfollowed a lot of them, although there are still two at least that I’m pretty sure are Instagram models. Their accounts are private and I’m not going to follow them to find out what’s up. I’ll only hurt my own feelings even more than I did just going through the list of people he follows on Instagram.

I know I should talk to him about it again, but I am just so sick of having this conversation with him. Neither of us want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to because he feels guilty about it (obviously, since he has been hiding it) and I don’t want to talk about it anymore because the whole thing just makes me feel so terrible.

There was one incident where Jon had downloaded Tinder behind my back and he was showing me something on his phone when a notification popped up and it turned into me feeling like he was cheating and I cried and then he cried and it was a whole thing. He deleted it and hasn’t done anything like that since, but he didn’t include on his profile that he was in a relationship and wouldn’t give me an explanation as to why and he just wouldn’t say much other than that he wanted to make friends and talk to people, but it was just horrible and traumatic for me and for some reason I let him convince me that he was genuine and I stayed, although I really question that decision sometimes because it still deeply bothers me and I’m not entirely convinced he wouldn’t cheat on me after that. I just have a very hard time trusting him after the Tinder thing and the porn stuff. And I just feel like we didn’t really get to the bottom of that whole issue, but it feels like it was too long ago to talk about it again despite that it still bothers me.

I know we have to talk about it more, but I just don’t want to fucking do this anymore. I’m exhausted.

We might be moving to a different place in town here at some point and if he does end up buying another house I’m going to have to talk to him about this and if he isn’t willing to give up porn completely then I won’t be moving with him and I’ll stay in our current rental and we will be done because I know I will not be happy being with him for the rest of our lives if he can’t quit porn and I’ll always have to worry about it.

I did some googling and found countless articles of women (and others) saying they felt shitty that their men/partners watched porn behind their backs. So many other people who feel the same as I do and have been damaged by this kind of thing. It’s good to know I’m not alone in this, but it’s so terrible that so many people feel like this. It hurts a lot.

I’ve done some light research on the negative effects of porn and it really does seem to be very harmful, particularly for relationships. And I know he has been watching porn since he was very young, he’s talked to me about it before. I do truly believe porn is incredibly harmful and it is FAR too easy to get access to it. I feel like porn has hurt our relationship and our sex life a lot.

For our anniversary one year I even did a boudoir shoot by myself at home and made him a little book with sexy photos of me and gave it to him and he said he loved it, but he hasn’t looked at it since I gave it to him. That’s a real punch to the gut.

There was one other incident where our one friend, a lesbian, sent him and a few others a snapchat video of her making out with another girl that he used to hang out with when they were younger and they weren’t wearing tops (this girl is wild and does all kinds of stupid shit when she drinks, which is all the time) and he saved it for later. I found out because she had called him crying because someone she sent it to recorded it and sent it around to other people and everybody found out about it and this other girl had a boyfriend, but anyway he told me what was going on and he went to pull it up to show me, but she had deleted it and he told me he had saved it. I asked why and at first he lied and said he saved it so she could see it later and maybe think about what she had done, but I saw through that pretty quick. Eventually he admitted to me that he had fantasized about a threesome with those two girls and that’s why he saved it. This was not too long ago. Like late 2020. I was mad and needed some time to think and told him we would talk about it, but eventually I just told him that I didn’t want to have this discussion again (which I shouldn’t have done because I let him off the hook basically) and that if he felt like he needed to hide something from me that should be enough to know he shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. With that he said okay and we never talked about it again.

I just feel like I’m putting a lot into this relationship and he isn’t being considerate of me here. He makes excuses as to why he feels like he has to get off all the time and that it helps him wake up in the mornings or that he functions better once he’s done it (untrue, he functions the same no matter what) and it drives me up a wall that he will choose that over having sex with me?????? Like, hi hello I am a human woman(adjacent) and I am willing to have sex with you literally whenever you want!!!!!! And you’ll still choose watching porn and jerking off instead??????????????????????! Yeah, I totally feel like you want me. I totally feel loved and feel like you find me attractive. Yep. You watch porn of women who are a million times more beautiful and sexy than I will ever be and they do things I could never do or just don’t want to do and you’ll choose that over ME and tell me that you do think I’m attractive and sexy and that you love me, but you hardly actually prove that to me.

He doesn’t call me pretty unless I basically ask him to, which sucks because if I ask for the compliment it doesn’t feel real, but if I don’t ask I’ll never hear it. He is quite affectionate with me generally, cuddling up and stuff, holding my hand sometimes when driving, that type of stuff, but I almost never hear him, unprompted, tell me I’m pretty.

I don’t know, it just really bothers me and of course I have to be feeling like this right in the morning when I have a ton of school work I should do. I just feel really sad now. I don’t know how to handle this anymore. I don’t know who to go to for advice. My best buddy Ryan is having kinda the same issue with his girlfriend, but they both watch porn (they don’t live together like Jon and I do) and she has been feeling insecure about Ryan’s porn habits, but she also watches porn and I know they had a talk about it all the other day, but I don’t feel like it’s any of my business to ask how it went or anything because it just straight up isn’t, but Ryan is who I have primarily talked to about this whole thing and he’s been very sympathetic to me about it and idk I just don’t know what to do or who to turn to. The last time I talked to my therapist it was about this whole thing and she basically told me to do my own research and that she didn’t have anything else to say to me about it (because we had talked about it multiple times) and that felt really shitty and like I wasn’t allowed to still be having this issue so I stopped going to her and haven’t seen anyone else since.

I love him a lot, I really do, and we get along really well, usually, but this just hurts a lot and I know I should never have put up with as much as I have. I should have set more boundaries and been firmer with them. It feels so fucking bad that he’s done this time and time again and gone behind my back with this shit and I keep talking to him about it and it keeps happening.

I’ve mostly avoided talking about this here because it feels so personal and gross and like I shouldn’t talk about it (that’s that Christian guilt). I hate that society makes sex and related issues to be such a dirty topic and that we can’t talk about it because I feel really alone and shitty about this. I try to push it down and ignore it, but it’s so hard to do and I’m just really sad...

[searchingwardrobes]

Self-Promo Sunday: Everyone Needs a Mother

I was inspired to write this story after reading a novel called No Other Will Do by Karen Witemeyer. In it, the main character is an orphan (who reminded me a lot of Killian Jones, actually), and even as an adult with a good job, he sets aside food whenever he eats. This is actually more of a Snowing and in particular a Mama Snow story than Captain Swan, which is part of the reason I’m deleting it from Ao3. However, I still love the feels in this story and hope ya’ll do too!

Summary: Snow notices a habit that her daughter and her son-in-law share, and it breaks her mothering heart. So, like any good mother, she decides to do something about it.

Rating:G (though discussions of children going hungry could be a trigger for some)

Words: 1500 and some change

On Ao3 until 11/24/19

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells​​​​​ @jennjenn615​​​​​ @kday426​​​​​ @let-it-raines​​​​​ @teamhook​​​​​ @kmomof4​​​​​ @bethacaciakay​​​​​ @profdanglaisstuff​​​​​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​​​​ @thislassishooked​​​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​​​  @whimsicallyenchantedrose​ @snidgetsafan​​​​​ @delirious-latenight-laughs​​​​​​ @winterbaby89​​​​​​ @distant-rose​​​​​​ @shireness-says​​​​​​ @xhookswenchx​​​​​​ @optomisticgirl​​​​​​ @spartanguard​​​​​​ @branlovestowrite​​​​​​ @welllpthisishappening​​​​​​ @hollyethecurious​​​​​​ @stahlop​​​ @scientificapricot​​​

The first time Snow noticed the habit in Emma, they were friends and roommates, ignorant of the fact that they were actually mother and daughter. They were chatting over breakfast as Emma toasted a bagel, slathering one half with cream cheese. The other she wrapped in a napkin before racing out the door. Snow shrugged it off assuming Emma was just in a hurry and finishing her breakfast on the run. But the pattern continued. One pancake and the other to go, one sugar cookie from the booth on Miner’s Day and one slipped in the inside pocket of her leather jacket. Snow finally came to the realization that her friend squirreled away food. To test her theory, she made a huge breakfast one morning with all the works: pancakes, bacon, eggs, and toast. There was no way Emma could slip any of that in her pocket.

But she could wrap up the plate in aluminum foil and slip it in the fridge.

The first time she noticed Killian’s similar habit, she had other, more pressing matters on her mind. Like the shiny steel hook that had her jaw dropping as she pulled it from his satchel. She didn’t really have time to think about the half a hard-tack biscuit wrapped in a handkerchief at the bottom. Exactly half of the biscuit they had given him back at the camp when they thought he was just a blacksmith.

When life slowed down, Snow noticed Emma and her true love’s habit more and more. When Snow asked them over for dinner, they never finished their plates, always asking for Tupperware at the end of the evening for the leftovers. Every time they met for meals at Granny’s, Emma and Killian had to ask for a two-go box. When Regina jokingly asked why they didn’t just share a plate like Lady and the Tramp, the pair looked up with bewildered expressions. That was when Snow realized the habit was so ingrained, they didn’t even realize they were doing it.

She started watching them more closely. Killian was methodical, cutting a pancake precisely in half or running a spoon evenly down a mound of mashed potatoes. Even so, he did it on autopilot, often continuing in lively conversation as he dissected his meal. Though Emma was generally more haphazard about it, sometimes pausing before a bite, then lowering the food as she seemed to think better of it; she did count out her onion rings carefully, dividing them into two neat piles.

The refrigerator at the Jones house was packed with leftovers. When Snow commented on it to Henry, he had shrugged, eyes never leaving his video game.

“Our refrigerator in New York was the same,” he told her distractedly, “Walsh threw stuff out that had been in there for months.”

It was as if her daughter and her son-in-law were literally storing away food for the winter. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find a stock of canned goods in the shed like Doomsday Preppers. Except Emma and Killian seemed completely unaware of what they were doing.

The years rolled by and still Snow made no comment. Until her granddaughter came along and almost from the start became a food hoarder. On her second birthday, the child only finished half her slice of cake and asked, “Gamma, can I has some tuppa?” The same thing she heard her parents ask after every family dinner.

Things had gone too far, so she decided to talk it over with David. They were doing the dishes together one night, when Snow brought it up.

“David, have you noticed that both Emma and Killian only eat half of their food?”

David’s brow creased as he thought about it. “Yeah, I guess so,” then he chuckled, “that explains why they’re both so thin despite Emma’s junk food obsession.”

Snow frowned, her eyes narrowing, “It isn’t funny, David. It isn’t just that they only eat half; they save the rest for later.”

David sighed as he took in his wife’s expression. He dried his hands on the kitchen towel slung over his shoulder as he turned to her. “Honey, I know it worries you, but it’s just an old habit.”

“A habit they picked up as orphans,” Snow cried, “and before you say I’m jumping to conclusions, I asked Archie about it.”

David shrugged, “Well, that makes sense, they both spent many years unsure where their next meal was coming from. Even as adults, they had it rough. Emma admitted to you sleeping in her car was nothing new, and I’m sure pirates have lean times quite often.”

“But they don’t have to worry about that now. They have steady jobs, a roof over their heads, and even if they lost those things, they have a huge family and a town full of friends who would never let them go hungry.” Snow was pacing now, her anxiety rising. David stopped her with gentle hands to her shoulders.

“Like I said, sweetheart, it’s just a habit. Now that I’m thinking about it, I know that you’re right. But I also know that they aren’t even aware that they do it. It isn’t hurting anyone.”

Snow tilted her head up to scowl at her husband. “It’s hurting Hope. She’s picked up the habit. The other day I gave her two chocolate chip cookies, but right before she took a bite of the second one, she stopped. Asked me to wrap it up for her. Do you know what she said? Never know when the stores might get low.”

She saw David’s mouth twitch up and knew he was suppressing a laugh. “So Killian has taught her some sailor’s wisdom. Self-control and saving for later aren’t bad ideas, actually.”

Snow crossed her arms and stared at the floor for a moment in thought. Then she looked back up at her husband thoughtfully. “Maybe I should talk to them.”

David’s eyes went wide as he shook his head. “No, Snow, no! Do you know how embarrassed they both would be? And I know how you and Emma get when her days as an orphan come up.”

“What do you mean?”

David sighed deeply. “You start feeling guilty and then Emma feels bad for making you feel bad. It never ends well. Look. I know you want to mother them, but believe me, it’s best to drop it.”

Snow knew he was right, even as a frown marred her face. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his chest as he held her close. He kissed the top of her head, and her eyes slipped shut. Her husband’s words replayed in her mind. I know you want to mother them.

Snow’s eyes flew open and she smiled. That was it!

**************************************************

Snow tried to be subtle about it: an extra scoop of mashed potatoes, a larger roast for family dinners, a slightly larger slice of pie. She even got Granny in on it, convincing the woman to give Emma an order and a half of onion rings. Or at least she thought she was being subtle. Then Emma cornered her in the kitchen after a family dinner at the farm house.

“Okay Mom, what’s up?”

Snow schooled her features as she turned from the refrigerator to see Emma standing there with her arms crossed. Snow mimicked her, crossing her own arms and leaning back against the appliance. “What are you talking about?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m talking about the obscenely large slice of chocolate cake you just served Killian.”

Snow laughed as she grabbed a cloth and began wiping down the counters. “Emma, he’s a grown man and a pirate. He can handle that much cake.”

“Please, Mom. You’re the world’s worst liar. I’ve noticed it for weeks now. The mountains of mashed potatoes, the extra-large roasts. And did you tell Granny to up my onion rings?”

Snow inwardly cursed as she felt heat rise to her pale cheeks. “Emma, you’re exaggerating.”

Her daughter arched an eyebrow and tapped her booted foot on the hardwood floor. “Mhm. Okay. What is it? Think we need fattening up? Worried we’re wasting away?”

Well, at least this Snow could answer honestly. She lifted her eyes to meet Emma’s. “Of course not, honey. You may be thin, but look at those arms of yours. I’ve seen you wrestle beasts, literally. And Killian may be slim, but I’ve seen those biceps when he actually takes off that leather jacket. You’re healthy as horses.”

A smile tilted Emma’s mouth, “You checking out my husband’s biceps, Mom?”

Snow laughed and flicked her daughter with the kitchen towel. “If I wanted to check out some hot biceps, I’d just admire your father with his shirt off.”

Emma’s nose crinkled, “Ew, mom, TMI!”

They both laughed for a minute or two, and then Snow came close and cupped her daughter’s face in her hands. “Can you trust me, Emma? You and Killian both went far too long without a mother, and I aim to fix that. Please?”

Snow could tell her daughter was trying valiantly to remain composed, but the sheen of tears in her eyes gave her away. Emma nodded then stepped from her mother’s embrace. Before turning to go, she shook the unshed tears away and flashed her mother a grin.

“I’m okay with that.”

***************************************************

At the next family dinner, Snow was filling up plates and passing them around the large dining room table in the farm house’s formal dining room. When she handed her daughter a loaded plate, Emma just winked and smiled at her mother. Then Snow added an extra scoop to Killian’s already massive mound of mashed potatoes, and handed him a plate as well.

The pirate winked at her as he accepted the heavy plate. “Thank you, Mother Snow.”

[tespuco]

PotC Liveblog: Curse of the Black Pearl

CotBP is one of my ‘forever films’ for sure - every time I rewatch it I not only feel the same sense of wonder and delight as the first time but invariably discover new things to love and squee over as well. 

I would love to learn more about Elizabeth as a child: this lonely, solemn girl who feels something perverse in her thrill at pirate stories and gallows humor, yet who gravely takes on the duty of looking after young William Turner because she wants to be good, too. (@dollsome-does-tumblr‘s Elizabeth-centric, post-CotBP fic Shrouded Heart explores this ambivalence in her self-concept with heart-wrenching emotional realism)

Wow, Will was doomed from the start, wasn’t he? I would be too if I were a 12-year old piece of half-drowned human driftwood waking up to a miniature guardian angel who softly murmurs, “I’m watching over you” before I drift back into unconsciousness

Framing Elizabeth’s memory of seeing the Black Pearl and meeting Will as a dream, one that impels her to put on the medallion, suggests fate or some other supernatural influence at work - a nifty way for writers to sidestep accusations of Contrived Coincidences and call it Destiny instead!

Keira Knightley is so beautiful hELP

Awww, Will is so proud of his handiwork! It’s interesting because the film puts a fair amount of emphasis on it early on, his skill and pride in not just wielding swords but forging them - only to tell us later that he’s really a pirate by blood and at heart. I like it when fics like fried_flamingo & salr323��s At World’s End: Redux lean into Will’s identity as a blacksmith and extrapolate from it an affinity for land/earth/balance/creation as opposed to the sea’s wild potential for destruction. (He lost his father to the sea and to piracy; he never learned to love either.)

My god everyone’s layered in buttoned-up and corseted finery in the fucking TROPICS no wonder Elizabeth passed out (ngl despite the ‘Caribbean’ in the title and visiting the Disney ride in New Orleans Square, I remember stupidly assuming Port Royal was part of England, not Jamaica; at 9 yrs old my geography was shit and I had yet to learn what imperialism was ok)

“A ship with black sails that’s crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that hell itself spat him back out.”  shiver me timbers now that’s how you tell a ghost story

“If he were telling the truth, he wouldn’t have told us” has the same antimonious energy as Winnie-the-Pooh going, “Well, it’s a good thing I noticed it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen it”

This is definitely tmi but in retrospect the rescue scene played a formative part in my (bi)sexual awakening: for a long time my go-to pubescent fantasies involved near-drownings followed by hypersexualized resuscitation attempts and frantic uncomfortable sex on wet rocks in damp subterranean caves

Omg I just realized Elizabeth’s scene with Jack on the docks mirrors the one she had on deck Will in the flashback: a (wo)man overboard recovered, rescuer hovering over a supine body and fingering the pirate medallion around his/her neck, love at first sight

“One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness.” “Though it seems enough to condemn him.” Basically “no good deed goes unpunished” but with style

16 years later and the swordfight between Jack and Will holds up as an iconic example of swashbuckling fight choreo. I also love how the exchange establishes the Jack/Will dynamic: the former as a kind of ironic mentor (“Excellent form. But how’s your footwork?”), the latter as an unwilling pupil who nevertheless mostly plays along

“I practice with them three hours a day.” “You need to find yourself a girl, mate.” Raunchy Shakespearean-grade comedy at its finest (along with  “This sweet, proliferous bouquet that is Tortuga…What do you think?” “It’ll linger.”)

“This shot is not meant for you.” I love the hints we get of Jack’s darker side: he keeps his bitterness close and his grudges closer; for 10 years he saved that bullet for one man, refusing to expend it in any number of life-threatening situations in the interim; he drawls, “Worry about your own fortunes, gentlemen. The deepest circle of Hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers,” like a witch uttering a curse. A dishonest man, methinks, would not feel the stab of betrayal so deeply.

The running joke of Will not getting recognized for his skills and earnest efforts is what makes Norrington’s parting words to him at the end so satisfying: “This is a beautiful sword. I would expect the man who made it to show the same care and devotion in every aspect of his life.” (NORRINGTON KNEW IT WAS HIM ALONG BUT WAS TOO JEALOUS TO EVER PRAISE HIM TO HIS FACE that petty little shit lmao)

I remember looking up the definition of ‘acquiesce’ after watching CotBP as a kid, so Barbossa had a direct hand in expanding my 9-year old vocabulary.

Competent, hyper-focused!Jack at the wheel with an unholy gleam in his eye as he gets drenched in a torrential downpour is my kind of Byronic hero

I prefer Jack Sparrow’s backstory to remain a loose collection of rumors and half-truths jumbled together even in his own memory, but I DO want to know how Jack and Gibbs met, how the former earned the latter’s (mostly) steadfast loyalty. I want to eavesdrop on all the inebriated conversational musings they’ve shared over a bottle of rum, whether topside on the decks of a ship not the Pearl or shouted above/muttered below the ruckus of a Tortuga tavern.

I’d also read/watch a prequel about the mutiny. “He plays things closer to the vest now. And a hard-learned lesson it was.” WHO HURT YOU JACK

Well obviously Barbossa did, but I still have so many questions! How did a younger, more trusting Jack earn the ire of his first mate and crew, to the point where they’d stage a mutiny? Then again, to hear Gibbs tell it, Barbossa simply appealed to Jack’s sense of fairness; perhaps in their unadulterated greed they saw Jack’s honest streak as a vulnerability to exploit? Or was it something in Jack’s manner of captaincy that fomented discontent? Idk, I can’t tell based on the way the crew jeers at “Gents, you all remember Captain Jack Sparrow?” whether their antipathy smacks more of derision or vitriol.

“Mr. Gibbs? …Jack? Jack Sparrow?” Elizabeth must be SO confused by these blasts from her distant and more recent past: who knows when Gibbs left Norrington’s employ, but the last time she saw Jack he had her in chains and at gunpoint, and now apparently he’s conspiring with Will??

I’ve always been kind of baffled by the cabin scene between Elizabeth and Will. What is she apologizing for? Taking the medallion and not telling him? Or for telling him and making him realize his father was a pirate?

Also her tearful, “Because I was afraid that you were a pirate. That would have been awful” is the biggest, bald-faced lie if I’ve ever heard one. She took an interest in him BECAUSE she thought he was a pirate (although I do think young Elizabeth had been afraid FOR him, after Gibbs’ pantomime of the hangman’s noose)

“daft like Jack” should be my Jack/Elizabeth/Will OT3 tag

Ah, back when PotC incorporated visual gags to spice up their action sequences instead of building the equivalent of a Rube-Goldberg machine around a single, unfunny gag. Compare: Gibbs’ canteen making its unlikely way from the Interceptor to the Pearl and back as an accompaniment to the battle and Jack’s breakout from his cell VS the overextended Tortuga sequence in DMC where Jack weaves in and out of a brawl to no apparent purpose except to try on different hats and then exit the tavern.

“Though it does seem a shame to lose something so fine, don’t it? …So I’ll be having that dress back before you go.” Barbossa is despicable and Geoffrey Rush delivers his lines with such RELISH

I will squee over the island scene & its deleted segments at length in a separate post so for now I’ll just say: Elizabeth is obviously a huge Jack Sparrow stan and she’s doing a piss-poor job of hiding it

Listen it’s easy to overlook Norrington’s sense of duty and decency in the face of the stick up his butt and his bouts of extreme pettiness. But the fact is that Jack’s attempt to manipulate and appeal to his ambition fails. Because the Commodore is no Barbossa - he’s a fine man who serves others, not only himself; who cares whether a woman’s acceptance of his proposal is less than sincere; who wouldn’t have risked his men ambushing the Pearl’s crew had he known about the curse (last two courtesy of the deleted scenes on the Dauntless).

Now that I’m paying closer attention I’m just blown away by the careful consideration in Jack’s plans. He’s playing both sides to further his own goal of enacting revenge at minimal risk to himself, but he looks after the unwitting parties he involves in the process, too: while the Royal Navy occupies the undead pirates from the safety of their long range cannons, Jack can intervene to save Will, use him to break the curse, and kill Barbossa. All the good guys win! (He couldn’t have foreseen the Trojan Horse or the en masse submarine attack; nor Norrington’s pettiness in defying Jack’s instructions to man cannons that would’ve blown the undead into smithereens.)

Exhibit B: “Now, to be quite honest with you, there’s still a slight risk for those aboard the Dauntless, which includes the future Mrs. Commodore.” Disregard his insouciant delivery here, and you get Jack telling the whole, unvarnished truth!!! “What do you have to lose?” he asks Norrington, who brushes him off: “Nothing I’d lament being rid of.” It’s JACK who reminds him that for all their precautions, the ambush might put Elizabeth in danger. Jack knows about the curse, and after being marooned on an island with her, he knows Elizabeth will do whatever’s necessary to save Will. So he finds a way to ensure not only that she won’t interfere, but that she’ll be kept safe from harm!! I’ll never be over it

And Murtogg’s “You think he wasn’t telling the truth?” line is such a great callback to their early sketch as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on the docks of Port Royal. These dimwits happen to know Jack does tell the truth, expecting no one to believe him. His own exhortations on the subject notwithstanding, Jack’s real trickery lies in rarely telling the whole truth, letting people make their own assumptions, and giving them enough rope by which to hang themselves.

Governor Swann is such a darling, the ultimate doting father. It’s easy to assume he doesn’t get Elizabeth at all, but he’s no idiot. He rightly suspects she only agreed to marry Norrington to save Will, and while he’s not above nudging her in that direction (“I believe you made a very good decision today. Couldn’t be more proud of you.”), he’s also not about to let his only daughter bargain away her happiness for the sake of his OTP. (And his face of exasperated affection at Jack’s hanging, when he realizes she only pretended to faint as a diversion! Notice the lack of surprise in his expression: that’s the face of a father who is all too used to her Pulling This Kind of Shit)

Jack keeps popping up like a bad penny and both Norrington and Barbossa are so appalled every time lol

The sequence where Will breaks the curse and Jack shoots Barbossa and Elizabeth jerks like she’s the one who was shot is just - *chef’s kiss* the CHOREOGRAPHY! the CAMERAWORK! the EDITING! 

“I feel…cold.” *a single apple rolls out of Barbossa’s dead hands* Can you believe a summer blockbuster movie invented poetic justice tell your English professors

“If all I have achieved here is that the hangman will earn two pairs of boots instead of one, so be it.” Ugh Will is sooo not my type but he’s so DASHING and GOOD no wonder Elizabeth covets him. What a hero

“My place is between you and Jack.” Ohhh you know what I would love to track the main characters’ alignment arcs throughout the series. Here Will’s situating himself as the Chaotic Good between Jack’s Chaotic Neutral and Norrington’s Lawful Good. But I would argue he’s still pretty Lawful and, even under Jack’s tutelage, only resorts to Chaos in extremis; meanwhile Jack flits between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral; Elizabeth’s arc is similar except it’s unidirectional; and without the Law at his back Norrington spirals into Neutral Evil. 

It’s the Sparrabeth shipper in me but the last line of the movie is Jack singing a song that Elizabeth taught him. (*Cutler Beckett voice* “We’ve had dealings in the past. And we’ve each left our mark on the other.”) For a fic about what Jack leaves her, may I redirect you to Shrouded Heart by dollsome, linked above - and this brain dump comes full circle!

[chocolatecarstairs]

qoaad theories

 i’ve had these theories for so long but i never got around to sharing them. talk about doing stuff at the last minute! (minor spoilers if you haven’t read the leaked first 3 chapters of queen/tmi spoilers) 

also a disclaimer: i know that some people have gotten their copies early and might be able to confirm/deny these rumors, but i am not one of those people. these are all theories i’ve had written down and dated in a notebook for varying amounts of time. if you are one of the people who got their copies early (you lucky, lucky bastards) please, please, please don’t confirm or deny any of these theories or correct them or spoil anything about the book for me and everyone else who is still waiting for their copy. (at the end of this post i’ll explain how i’ll tag spoilers for those of you who wish to not see them to be able to block and avoid)

the parabatai curse has something to do with heavenly fire: basically jules and emma have both described burning sensations and extreme heat so many times in the series. (ex; emma always notes that julians skin feels hot to the touch, in lm the day after emma heals jules from the posion arrow he applies runes to her and she notices that they burn and sting which is the opposite of what is supposed to happen when your parabatai gives you runes) and in the leaked first three chapters after julian and emma almost frick-frack julian rushes off and looks at his parabatai rune in the mirror and its like glowing and has flecks in it? which is exactly how jace’s eye are describe in cohf when he still doesn’t have the heavenly fire under control and he loses control kissing clary in the alley. we’ve actually never really seen what the heavenly fire does longterm. clary traps the heavenly fire in the morgernstern sword just days after jace got it so it could reason that the heavenly fire drives people insane after a while because they’re not equipped to handle something so divine and powerful. it also could do it quicker to people who don’t have extra angel blood. i also think that this could have something to do with the snippet cassie released about emma’s marks (we all assumed it meant her marks disappeared but i have a feeling that’s not the case.). the snippet was entirely out of context and i think cassie posted it that way on purpose. she wanted us to believe that emma’s marks had disappeared but maybe they were actually glowing like julian’s parabatai mark had been (which could be one of the physical changes cassie mentioned.) and this is how the curse and the heavenly fire will take affect.

diego is going to die: i hate to even type this one out bc over the course of the series i’ve actually grown to like diego as a character, but i think he’s going to die in qooad. jaime will (presumably) be living in la for twp as he is an important character in that series, and i don’t think he’d leave the mexico institute if he hadn’t experienced some great tragedy that made it too painful for him to stay. i know that’s a stretch, but it isn’t my only reason for thinking perfect diego is kicking the bucket. he is currently in a marriage contract w zara and i don’t see the dearborns letting him out of it that easily. even if he can’t give them the heirloom i could see zara and horace forcing him to marry into the family as punishment and as security that if the heirloom ever does turn up zara will be able to use it to invade faerie. not to mention, he is harboring kieran at the sholomance which at the very least would be frowned upon by the clave and considered abominable by the cohort, but it also quite probably illegal. with horace as the new inquisitor and the mortal sword out of commision the cohort will probably spin a tale of treason and faerie-sympathizing on the part of diego and his friends that helped him hide away kieran. this will probably make him a target for everyone in the cohort. not to mention i feel like his storyline will wrap up at some point in qoaad and i could even see him dying in some way to save cristina and repay this debt he feels he owes her for breaking her heart (not to mention he is obviously still in love with her.).

we’re not going to see too much of ty actually mourning, but what we do see is gonna be heart-wrenching: we all know ty is going to try to use necromancy to bring livvy back from the dead (which was one of my earlier theories about qooad) and that the only reason ty isn’t a mess over her death is because he thinks she’ll be back with him soon enough. obviously, almost none of us believe this is going to work and we’re fully prepared for livvy to stay dead. i don’t think ty is going to realize that there is no way to bring her back until way later if not the very end of the book and watching him come to that realization is going to be an incredibly emotional experience for not just us as readers, but for kit and dru, and especially for ty himself. livvy and ty had a bond that i think was even closer than the parabatai bond and so watching him go through the stages of grief and finally accept the fact that his twin and partner and best friend (who as it had been mentioned before he has literally never gone without her a day in his life and has never been in a world she wasn’t in) is dead is going to be one of the most tragic losses/parts of not just the dark artifices but the entire shadowhunter chronicles.

zara dies, horace lives: kind of a simple theory but i’m 50/50 about zara making it out of this series alive. i have nothing to base this on but a gut feeling. i just really feel like one of the dearborns is going to die and think it would be a better death if it was zara. it’s kind of dark and twisted but zara dying would be an amazing cosmic punishment for horace. he would be going on in a world where the only person he had in life (it’s been mentioned his wife is dead and so far they haven’t mentioned any other family) is gone. 

the cohort isn’t going anywhere just yet: in fact, i think whatever happens in qoaad will just give them more power. livia’s watch will (hopefully) give them a run for their money, but at the end of the day i don’t see them being disbanded or falling apart. cassie has even said that at the end of the book things will be “not great for a lot of people”. i think she meant downworlders and non-racist nephilim. people like alec, jocelyn, and aline (and presumably cristina and diana) who have fallen in love with and been involved in serious relationships with downworlders or part downworlders. people like helen, mark, and kit who have downworlder/faerie blood. and finally for allies to the nephilim like maia, lily, magnus, luke, kieran, gwyn and so on who will likely bear the brunt of whatever the cohort has planned.

ragnor fell is shade: not a very original or well thought out theory. just the only person i can think of that we’ve seen before who is green and could possibly have a relationship with church. (he was very good friends with magnus in basically every series of tsc. church was taken care of by magnus for some time after jem became a silent brother which could explain how he and ragnor would know each other.)

kieran is heading back to faerie: i wanna see the hot faerie threesome last just as much if not more than everyone else out there but i have a feeling it’ll be a one and done type of thing. i see kieran either heading back to the unseelie court as king or a prince (hopefully the unseelie king dies) or being reclaimed into the wild hunt. if adaon takes the kings place i think he would welcome kieran back into the court as a prince and kieran would have some sort of gentry responsibility. if kieran is king then as it's been stated before “a king of faerie can have no human consort.” cassie even replied with that quote to a since-deleted tweet that i believe was about keirark or kieraktina. if kieran isn’t brought back to the unseelie court and the unseelie king dies gwyn will probably take kieran back into the hunt. the only reason kieran isn’t with them right now is bc the unseelie king wants him dead, so it stands to reason that, if the king is dead and the courts don’t claim kieran, gwyn will take him back to the wild hunt.

julian will sever the parabatai bonds (parabatai theory #1): we already know that the parabatai curse will be resolved “one way or the other” and right now the only substantial and viable option we’ve been given (besides jules or emma dying which is a fat NOPE) is the severing of all parabatai bonds using the black volume. it’s been heavily hinted at, if not flat-out stated, that julian is more than willing to sever the bonds if it means keeping emma and his family safe. julian and emma will be sent on a quest to faerie seemingly to retrieve the black volume and return it to horace/ the clave. according to one of the snippets, they apparently bring it to the seelie queen and she will only tell julian how to break the bonds. i personally don’t think cassie would have done it this way if julian was just going to tell emma right after. either she won't want to know or he’ll refuse to tell her, so i don't think she’ll even be able to break the parabatai bond. (unless they have to do it together which would be super cool) and i’ve mentioned it before, but cassie has said that the shadowhunter world will be changed forever in and leading up to twp and that the storyline would deal with how the protagonists and other characters adapt to those changes. i really feel like one of those changes could be the breaking of the parabatai bonds.

cortana is the key to breaking emma and julian’s parabatai bond (parabatai theory #2):  throughout the series, there have been multiple references made to the fact that cortana can cut through anything (ex; using cortana emma killed a rider of manaan which was previously thought to be impossible, emma also destroyed the mortal sword in combat using cortana). if cortana can truly cut anything then surely it should be able to cut the bond between emma and julian. i don’t know exactly how that would work, but this could also tie in with the severing of all parabatai bonds. maybe you need a blade made by wayland the smith to severe them. anything is possible.

that’s basically it on my theories for qoaad. i don’t know if any of them will come true, but i had a lot of fun theorizing over the past year and a half while i waited for queen. in the past couple weeks i’ve reread cohf, lady midnight, and lord of shadows in preparation for queen of air and darkness, so i only posted the theories i thought were relevant or most likely based on the proof i had from those previous books. maybe once i’m done with queen i’ll make a separate post of all the theories i had that were correct or partially correct.

since queen comes out tomorrow (technically today since it’s 5 AM) i wanted to make this long overdue announcement. i know i don't have a ton of followers (100 as of just recently!! thank you guys sm!), but many of you guys are tda or shadowhunter fans, so from now until sometime in january (likely january 4, but possibly later as i know some people will be getting the book for christmas) i will be tagging nearly all queen of air and darkness posts with the tags #qoaadspoilers, #qoaad spoilers, #queen of air and darkness spoilers (with the exception of things we already know like stuff from snippets or non-spoilery pictures). if you don’t wish to see any spoilers from me you can block these tags. that way posts tagged as such won’t show up on your news feed. i know a lot of other blogs are doing the same, so it’s a pretty great way to block spoilers all across the board (even cassie recommended it)! if any of you want to know anything specific about the book feel free to pm me, i've literally been talking about this book for weeks so once i know what its actually about i’ll be more than happy to rant about it with any of you!

[arbitrarycogitation]

Focus

Might delete. :)

A lot of people are stuck at home nowadays. Students, workers, parents, whoever you are, I hope you’re okay in there. This post is mostly about how I am trying to be as productive as possible while constantly being home.

Focusing and memorizing will never be my thing. Yes I can focus for some time, yes I hyperfocus sometimes. And yes I do remember a lot of thing and yes I can grasp and remember certain concepts quickly. But. Sitting down and doing something for more than 90 minutes? No thanks. Memorizing a poem, speech or words that might save me “later in life”? What’s the point. Why can’t we as a society accept that there are people who can’t adhere to certain conditions? Why is it so hard to understand that some things aren’t meant to be done the same way over and over again? Patterns are amazing and our world will crumble without it but it’s not the way of teaching young minds into remembering the different functions of a rubber duck. Some people can recite a poem and knows them by heart just like that, others need to act it out. Some might need props and some might need to write and draw it on a medium. Some people might deem it important and remember it for life and others will forget the poem because it’s not relevant anymore to them.

My point is. It’s okay to be different, to do things differently. Being stuck at home made me realize that if I want to be productive, I would need to feel comfortable with my “schedule” first. You might be thinking, I’ve always done it like this and that while I’m in school or work, and I’ve never had any problems or stress about how things are done. If you are having difficulties now, it’s not your fault. Maybe the way of the school or work was not for you, personally. I’m not saying you need to quit or do anything drastic, I’m saying it’s okay to change your routines, and do things a bit more your way. I know some people are saying you have to mimic your working station in order to be more productive, but some might agree that, well, you ARE at home, why not be a bit comfy? Working at one “station” might be the way of some people, but wanting to move around is perfectly fine too. Personally, I need to stay in one place in order to get some work done, but I also need to take a break whenever I finish one task (because if I take a break in the middle of doing something I will lose all motivation to do said task). Nowadays I try to work my study time around my online classes and make sure I have enough time to take care of myself. The number one thing I priotize in my “schedule” these days is when to stop. I limit myself to 10pm. If it’s past 10pm I will try to stop myself from working and wind down for the night. So far I haven’t had any problems with it, even though sometimes I need to keep working for a bit because I procrastinate earlier. Schedules are your guides, but it’s okay to stray once in a while.

Because I’m bored and I’ve been watching one too many day-in-a-life youtube videos, I’ll guide you to the day-in-a-life of yours truly, me. Stop reading here if you think this will be pointless, most of them are tmi about myself anyways.

So I wake up depending on the online classes I have that day? My earliest is 7am and my latest is 10am. I try to sleep earlier but nothing is working for me (fyi I sleep around 1am-3am? Bad? No? Idk honestly, at least I’m getting decent hours of sleep?). I check my phone for messages and the things I have to do today (I use google calendar and google keep, nothing too complicated) and I shower because. Force of habit? After that I try to snack on something and drink something hot while I get my electronics and papers ready for the day. If I have a class in the morning I’ll do the class and organize my notes right after because I’ll forget everything if I don’t do it, then I’ll eat lunch. But if my classes are in the afternoon or evening I’ll study until 1,5-2 hours before the class. I found studying right after a shower super effective, maybe because at this point it’s still early in the day. In this case I typically have my meal before class, because being hungry in class is not fun and I feel bad snacking in the middle of online class. I’m an anxious and shy person by nature (even though sometimes people can’t tell, it’s okay, my gotta-be-social overdrive is quite powerful) so I have to literally prepare my mind for the class, oh and maybe read the things we might learn that day, while checking my social media, and replying people. After the classes I’ll chill for maybe 1 hour and if I still have time before 10pm I’ll do some homework or notes. If I finish class at 8 or 9pm I just, chill. Play some games, write my journal, watch some videos and get ready for bed. I study with some music because I concentrate better that way? It forces me to concentrate on the thing I’m doing but also, remind me to not be too tense. Something like “there’s music playing! How bad can this thing be?”. But of course, sometimes I don’t study at all, sometimes I play animal crossing one too many hours and end up praying I’m not late for class, sometimes I need to call my friends and push studies for later, so this “routine” really depends on the circumstances of the day. For me, at least. Truthfully, I’m still behind on my notes and I haven’t found any time to work on my personal projects, but I’m trying to not freak out too much because I know that the workload nowadays are somehow increasing? Teachers out there please do not give more work, I need to build my town in animal crossing and get that land shaping tool. And yes the undone work are ungraded but it’s still “work” I need to do at some point. Wish me luck. I wish you all luck too, breathe, chill, shower, eat snacks. Oh and, this is just me ranting, please do not feel the need to follow whatever is written here in any way and manners. You do you, what works for me, might be disastrous for someone else. With that, thank you for reading, but no, I’m not done yet. Feel free to continue to this next part.

Things I try to avoid:

1. Too many news

2. Snacking (I’ll focus on the snack more than my work)

3. Doing one thing for too long, my limit is 3 hours max.

4. Why you might ask. So I don’t put too much stress on myself? “Taking a 10, 30 minutes break is okay”

5. My phone, and by extension, the internet.

6. Too much coffee.

7. Napping on the desk

8. I think that’s it? Thank you for reading. Stay safe everyone. Oh and feel free to message me if any of you need to talk to someone. (Just saying hi is ok too :D)

Bai.

[a-secretplace]

That guy I really liked and still kinda like

/!\ very long post ahead /!\

Before starting this LONG ASS story time, know that every glimps of names are fictional but every single event happened. I probably forgot about lots of things but there are a lot of infos already. Disclaimer: I’m not a native english speaker so I might do mistake here and there, don’t mind me !

About the people I mentioned (just so if you’re lost, you can have a little resume here) I present all the “characters” in the story the first time I mention them, so don’t worry if you don’t remember clearly the next paragraph. H. — my best friend’s boyfriend and the guy I liked. They started dating in September ‘17. K. — a girl who is part of the same group of friends H., my best friend and I are a part of. B. — a really close friend of mine who my best friend and I went to art school with 10 years ago. S. — a good friend of mine who was originally my best friend’s friend. They don’t talk anymore. L. — my best friend’s ex-boyfriend who is still a very good friend of mine.

A little less than two years ago, back in April ‘18, I came back home from a six month travel in Japan. I was able to meet the girl I considered to be my best friend, who started dating a guy right before I left the country.

This boy - who I will refer to as H. - first seemed a bit "too much", being overly demonstrative of his love for my friend and overall acting a bit childish. For the whole situation to be a little clearer, here are a few more infos about H. and his relationship with my friend. They met when they were maybe 15 yo. When they started hanging out again almost 10 years later, H. was living at his grandma’s place. When my friend and H. started dating, he moved in with her at her parent’s place after less than 6 months.

So I had a kind of bad opinion about him but, for my friend and because she loved him, I tried my best to accept H. and tried to know him better. After hanging out with them a few times, he rapidly gained my trust and my friendship. He seemed nice, honest and he was a really funny guy, even if he sometimes seemed to tell random lies about parties he said he went to.

During the following summer, I realized I was maybe having a "too good” opinion about the guy. What I mean is that I felt so much friendship for H. that it kind of didn’t feel like friendship anymore. I got worried and wanted to tell my friend about it, mainly because I wanted to understand what I felt and maybe she would have been able to help, but I got really scared that she might not understand that I would have done nothing to hurt her and that she might start hating on me.

In the mean time, I remembered that, the very first time I met H. - which happened before I left for Japan, at a time both my friend and H. were single - I told my friend that H. was cute and, at some point, I tried hitting on him.

Because I wanted to tell my friend about my present struggle but didn’t know how to, I decided to tell her about that time I tried hitting on H., presenting it as a fun fact and asking her not to tell H. ever. She promised she would keep it a secret. A week later, I was having a bad time with myself and being lonely. To cheer me up, H. told me that, if he didn’t date my friend, he "would have tried" with me. The irony hitting me hard at that moment, I told him what I told my friend a week ago and he said he didn’t know anything about it, but his act seemed off. That’s when my friend came in saying she was sorry and that she told H. right after I told her, a week ago. Apparently, he blushed really hard when she told him.

From this moment, lots of ambiguous situation started happening from time to time.

The first one happened a week later (if I remember it well). I was feeling shitty and my friend tried to cheer me up, but didn’t help AT ALL, she just made me turn silent because I felt so misunderstood and because she acted like she wasn’t listening to anything I said. Plus, she told me that she started to worry that H. might someday cheat on her and that I could tell her anything, including if I fell in love with H., which I laugh to when she said it. That’s when H. came in and my friend left us alone. He started telling me many many things, about how he could become my best friend if I wanted to and how he would always be here to help if I needed. I was crying really really hard and we hugged for maybe 5 whole minutes straight, kept talking a little and hugged again. When we came back to the others, my best friend was crying, telling how she felt so helpless and useless. We did our best to reassure her and cheer her up.

A little while later, we were in a club, my best friend was really drunk again and, as she does every time she is drunk, she left us alone to talk to strangers. H. asked me if I "would have tried" if he had show interest to me before leaving Japan. I answered that I didn’t know, that I was the type to sabotage myself so I probably wouldn’t have tried anything. During the same night, he told me twice that, if my best friend kept drinking as much as she did, he wouldn’t like to stay with someone like this.

A few other things happened between September ‘18 and May ‘19. Sometimes, there were looks that didn’t seem innocent at all and more "romantic" ones (if I dare say), or him touching my tight and putting his face really close to mine when I was falling asleep, stroking my hair, watching over me discretely, doing that flying kisses thing, sometimes putting his hands on my waist, staying around me while ice skating instead of staying with his girlfriend, etc. In the mean time, I accepted that I actually was interested in H. but still didn’t tell anyone.

There are a few stuffs that happened that deserve a bit more details too. For H’s birthday, we had dinner at my friend’s place. During the whole dinner, H. and I kept playing like little kids and laughing at random stuffs, to the point where everyone was wondering what was going on and my friend started getting a bit angry. (Note: my friend and H. are both VERY jealous/possessive and get extremely defensive when someone talk to/stays around the other for too long.) At some point, there were H., an other friend and me at the table. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but H. said that I liked him when I first met him. I corrected him, saying I only thought he was cute. He asked if I still found him cute and, because I didn’t want to tell the truth nor lie, I said that I wouldn’t answer. Our friend jokingly said "Don’t say that, his ego is gonna grow even bigger", which H. answered with a “What grew bigger is the thing between my legs". Thanks for the TMI, dude.

In December, we all met at the local fun fair. As I don’t like rollercoasters and H. is unable to ride any because of inner ear problems, we both stayed in front of the rides. At some point, we decided to go buy some drinks while our friends were all on a ride. As we arrived in front of the food stand, he asked me out of the blue if I would possibly have s*x with him. Surprised and confused, I answered again that I wouldn’t answer. He told me that I should accept my feelings and, without thinking, I said "no, I don’t want to get killed".

We were sometimes texting each other, sharing music or video games we were interested in, sometimes he asked me about things my friend liked so he could surprise her and I played along.

In May, he asked me if I wanted to hang out with him during the day. At that time, he didn’t have a job and I had a part time job so we both had a lot of free time. I accepted and he asked me to keep us hanging out a secret, because at that time he was having some issues with my friend’s parents and didn’t want to make things worse and possibly get kicked out. We met and had a great time, playing video games or watching tv shows and everything seemed fine. The same day, our group of friends all met at my friend’s place and the night went a little wilder than usual. I was quite drunk, thanks to some hellish drinking game. H. asked me to rank him and one of our boy friend on who I would most likely and least likely have sex with. Being drunk and unable to think, I answered that he was number one and our friend was number two. This was my first moment of weakness and my first mistake. Later during the night, H. switched seat with someone and sat next to me. He discreetly asked me if I wanted to meet him in the hallway so we could make out. His girlfriend aka my best friend was sitting literally in front of us and I actually got surprised that nobody heard him say it. I looked at him with a mix of surprise and fear and he said “I was just checking how drunk you are". I replied "I knew you were kidding!" and he said "Or maybe I’m acting like it to hide the fact that I’m serious and maybe you’re convincing yourself I’m kidding because you know I’m not". At that point, I was lost between the will to ignore him, run away and stay to see what would happen next.

Everyone getting very tired, we all started getting ready to leave. My best friend was asleep and our other friends had left. I got ready and said bye to H. He had a really weird look on his face, like he was hesitating on doing something. I ignored it and left, walking home by feet. It was a 30 minutes walk so everything was fine. Halfway, H. texted me asking how I was and saying he was worried about me. I told him everything was fine and that I was halfway home.

At this point, he told me that he needed to tell me something but that I had to promise him not to tell anybody and delete the messages afterwards. I accepted. He told me that he really wanted to kiss me that night. I answered that I knew it, that I had my doubts. I then told him that I wanted to kiss him too and that it wasn’t the first time. This was my second and probably biggest mistake.

Starting from these messages, we talked a lot about how we felt and what we would have liked to do. We talked about our guilt for feeling this way and that we didn’t know what to do. I told him I didn’t want to make him a cheater and he told me that he had already cheated on two of his girlfriends in the past, saying that “it was the end anyway” and that he only told his best friend and I about it. The conversation going on, I told him that we should never talk about it again and act like we didn’t know anything. He kind of agreed and we kept talking until 5am. And he sent me a d*ck pic too (yup, had to say it but didn’t know how to bring the subject...). I didn’t sleep at all that night and, the day after, H. texted me and we started talking on Snapchat.

We talked everyday for two weeks and I felt fantastic. The guy I liked was interested in me and, as unlucky as I could have been, it was the first time this actually happened to me. At the end of the second week, he invited me at his place during the morning of my day off. I had a really bad feeling about this : I had an important appointment right after and was stressed and I had the feeling that our friend might come home early to surprise H. or that her father might come home earlier too. H. convinced me that everything was fine and I visited him. Still worried, I kept all my stuffs next to me in case someone came home, so I would have been able to hide on the balcony until a possibility of leaving stealthily would present itself. H. being a little stupid sometimes, he closed the door of the room, so there was no way of hearing someone entering the appartement and closed the window, so we couldn’t hear my friend’s car. We didn’t do anything other than friends would do. At some point, H. received a text from my friend and, when he tried to read it, she had already deleted the message. I got worried and said that maybe I should leave, but he reassured me and I stayed.

A little later, my friend opened the door of the room and we all just looked at each other in shock. She was angry but mostly surprised and lost. She was acting very distant with H. obviously and I left a little later, saying I had an appointment to attend. Eventually they worked it out the same day and, as we met the same night, my friend and I talked about it and she told me everything was fine.

The following week, H. remained silent. He only texted me once to ask for a pic and I threw him off. A few days later, he told me that he was deleting Snapchat and that we had to stop talking, that he loved my friend and that he had nothing to hide. I answered but he never read my message. I started getting angry, I felt used, manipulated and overall stupid for believing in his bullshit. I sent him the same message on WhatsApp, since we had nothing to hide I gave no shit if my friend saw it. We talked a little, he told me that he didn’t try to use me, that he still felt the same but that we couldn’t do anything at the moment except wait.

From there, I started saving everything.

We stopped talking. I felt horrible, I had the feeling that I was manipulated to fulfill some weird kink and that I was the only one ready to face some possible consequences. My mood was really dark for quite some time and didn’t know what to do. I kept switching moods from really sad to vengeance-thirsty, I wanted to make sure everyone knew how was really H. and force him face the consequences of his action.

All I could do during three months was tell a few friends about what happened. I first told B., a girl my best friend knew and one of my closest friend. Then, I told S. who knew my best friend as well but they didn’t stay in good terms. Finally, I told L., my best friend ex-boyfriend, and his girlfriend. I met with my best friend too at this time. We talked about H. She told me about some weird message (which was a “are you asleep?” in the middle of the night) that he sent to a girl we all met once and that he explained that he just considered her as a friend. Then she asked me if he ever did or said something weird. My mind screamed that he did so many weird shits, all the memories from last September to this day coming up, but all I was able to say was “no, he didn’t say anything weird” while looking her right in the eyes. I wanted to protect H. and didn’t want him to end up without a roof over his head. But remember, I wanted vengeance too, so I told her about him asking me to join him in the hallway to make out. To reassure her, I told her that I didn’t think he was serious and that it was some sort of “douche” humor. I added that I was pretty sure that she heard it since she was right in front of me when it happened. She got a little angry and mumbled “I’ll kill him”. She then told me “if anything was happening, you would tell me right?” and I agreed. The following night, I met her and H. at her place and, of course, H. was acting really cold with me because of what I said. I felt bad and guilty, like I betrayed his trust.

Before going on, you have to know that I’m not and never was a liar. I value truth and honesty more than anything. But for some reason (the feelings I had towards H.), I had a hard time holding on between what I considered right and what I actually wanted. I definitely did stuffs I shouldn’t have but lying to everyone and watching H. lie to my best friend felt like a stab in the chest, every single time.

In August, H. "attacked” again during a night in a club. He asked me to rank him on a scale from 1 to 10, then we talked about other stuffs, I don’t remember it clearly but I remember playfully touching his face at some point. He told me that he dreamt about me pretty often, we mentioned the d*ck pick, he was quite tactile and, when we were leaving, he touched my b*tt.

A few days later, right after B. told me that my friend tried to interrogate her about H. and I and that I should definitely back off and run away from the dude in a quite agressive way, H. asked me to give him my email by Instagram DMs. We talked via emails and I tried to make things clearer for both of us, telling him exactly what I wanted to have with him and asking him to be honest for once and tell me what he wanted to have with me. I then told him that we shouldn’t talk like this and that we had to remain friends.

We didn’t talk for a week and I felt really really bad, mostly because I just had a fight with my best friend. I needed to talk to someone and the only person I thought about was H. So I made a third mistake and sent him an email. Since then, we talked everyday for months until last December. First, everything went very well, I felt amazing again and we were talking a lot. As time went by, our talks and messages got shorter and I used to sometimes get really mad at him, because I had the feeling he was making excuses as why he would suddenly stop answering for hours. H. happened to be incoherent as well sometimes, for exemple changing details in stuffs he would tell me and, when I would mention the change, he would say shit like “yeah I know what I told you the first time, I was just making sure you were listening/remembering well” or telling me for a week that he was sick and sleeping all day only to tell me a few days later that he didn’t rest for the whole week and had a lot of things to do. When I confronted him, he denied. 

A little later after starting messaging each other again, I met with my friend to discuss a time we had a big fight. We explained our points of view on various subjects and agreed that, if anything bothers one of us, we need to tell the other right away instead of letting things get worse by not working it out.  At some point, I told my friend how I felt towards her view on my relationship with H., telling her that I had the feeling that sometimes, she was seeing me as a threat and was afraid to tell me so to preserve our friendship. She told me that she didn’t see me as a threat at all and, more like the opposite, she was being more suspicious about H.’s behavior. She haded that, if anything had happen or was happening between us, she knew that I wouldn’t be the cause of it and that I would end up telling her. What makes this meeting important is that, when she told me this, I saw how resignated she was about the whole situation. I knew that she knew exactly what was going on but, having no control over it and having no solid proof, she just choose to force herself into believing one if not both of us. I couldn’t help but feel guilty, quite horrible as a person and really sorry for her. I know she saw it in the way I looked at her, I can’t hide anything from anyone and everybody knows that.

Mid-December, H. suddenly got silent and didn’t answer my message for days. I got extremely worried because the situation felt extremely similar to the one in May. I didn’t want to feel thrown away again, I needed to stay in control of the situation. So I wrote an email telling him that this was over, that I wasn’t hesitating anymore and that the way he behaved proved me I made the right choice. I added that I wouldn’t answer emails but, if he wanted or needed explanations, he could call me or text me on WhatsApp in a friendly way. He never reached for me and, even last time we met, he didn’t mention it.

Talking about the last time we met, I realized I reached my limit. Seeing H. act like the perfect boyfriend while knowing everything that happened made me lose my mind. I got really gloomy and, when he and my friend left the party, I just blew up and told one of our close friend, K., the whole story. She told me that she felt since September ‘18 that something was going on and that she talked about it many times with her boyfriend. I only confirmed every doubts she had. Told you, I can’t hide anything. I don’t know if it was a good thing or not, but I learned a lot about the guy. K. told me that he had a reputation for being a cheater and a liar and, as she told me so, a lot of things got clearer. I learned that everyone except my best friend knows that H. had already cheated. K. told me that he is the main problem, that he took advantage of my lack of experience to make me fall for him and that I shouldn’t feel so bad about all this. Even if I’m not the one having to stay committed, I still feel responsible, I should have said “no” and “stop” multiple times and stand my ground.

A few days later, I met L. and his girlfriend and we talked about the situation. I told the girl that H. told my friend and I about something I was pretty sure was a lie. He said that he knew her because she "tried to hit on him at a bar a long time ago". As expected, this never happened and, actually, the girl never went to the bar H. mentioned.

As I’m writing this, the story isn’t over yet and some elements are still quite fresh. What I learned is that H. shouldn’t be trusted and that I really got manipulated to believe what he wanted me to. I don’t know if some things he said were true, like when he said that what he felt towards me was mostly not s*xual. For all I know, it might have all been a lie. The only sure thing is that he wanted to have s*x with me.

I’m planning on telling my friend what happened, but I’m scared. Scared to lose my friend, even if I need to tell her and she needs to know, even if our friendship has more lows than highs and is quite dysfunctional. Scared of the image some people might have of me, even if being into a friend’s boyfriend is definitely not a habit, never will be and none of this ever happened before. Scared of being isolated.

Scared of losing H. friendship as well.

Doesn’t matter if I felt used or manipulated, if I was a side chick, doesn’t matter how much he lied to me or to others. This is stupid but I still want us to remain friends. H. is probably one of those people that are very nice to be around as long as you don’t grow too close. From mine and specially K’s experience, he is a great friend and will do whatever it takes to cheer a friend up. 

Anyway, I still have everything saved. Every WhatsApp and Instagram DMs, every email (and dear God, there are so many) and most of the Snapchat messages (I took pictures of my screen with a camera so he would never know about it). I’m not sure that this will be useful someday but at least I’m covered. I’m not trying to make H. the bad guy, I did stuffs that make me a bad person too. I just don’t want H. to be able to picture me as the succubus who nearly got him cheat on my friend. As I said earlier, I value truth more than anything and the truth is that I did some bad stuffs too. I’m 100% ready to face the consequences. I’m only scared/worried that I might end up more hurt than what I expected.

I hope telling my friend is the right thing to do. I hope I will be able to tell her soon and not wait 2 more months. I hope she won’t hate me, even if she probably should. I hope H. won’t hate me, even if he probably will. I hope I won’t end up isolated. I hope my friend will be ok, because she is quite fragile at the moment and I don’t want to make things worse. I hope K. and her boyfriend won’t pick a side. I hope no one will start talking shit about me, because this is not who I am.

Sorry for the long post, have a nice day !

[anyu-blue]

My kitties love me so much 💙

Lots of blah and personal stuff going here based on my day. Might delete later, but for now I shouldn't bottle it up. Tmi following.

Worked long and hard enough that my socks adhered to my feet tonight and that was mildly skin- crawling... And in that time- a contributing factor for sure was- a guy I went to high school with came in.. again.. as customers do, but honestly.. not all of them are quite so.. yeah. Loves to go off about how 'pretty' I've become compared to how I was in highschool. I accept the compliment gladly as it is... But I would appreciate it being given without the extra bits... Which are fairly insulting if not to me, to his GF whom I hope has a good head on her shoulders...

I'm flattered he would leave his GF for me because I'm that 'pretty'. I'm flattered he thinks I deserve a good man and a decent life. Truly even I cannot help the color that rises to my cheeks when served such compliments on my natural beauty as a woman- there's never any makeup in the way. Ever.

I appreciate his compliments as shallow as that possibly makes him.

But all the same.. he is the type of guy I cannot dissuade.. he's another to add to my list. And God damn if I don't feel absolutely guilty for that.

Why should I? Why should I feel guilty for turning them down?

I don't really.. not for that is it is on the surface... My guilt lays under the surface...

I attract men as I am- no trying, no searching, no interest, generally- and each one I turn down again and again and again...

And I'd be lying if each time it doesn't cross my mind... "What a waste."

A waste of their time. A waste of their interest. A waste of all that I have naturally right at this moment.

I feel sorry for the way I am. GUILTY. Oh so guilty for it...

I so desperately wanted to be normal. To have my own children, naturally. To contribute properly to society in such ways... And yet I have jumped up and clinged even more desperately to any and every reason to avoid it so so easily. Too young. Not enough finances. Too much pain (cyst). Oh look a twisted organ and more pain (cystS).

...

But I know the reason why. I didn't for a while, and I did not understand it for even longer.. but I do now. And guys like that make me hate myself for it. Such a waste.

But goddamn it!! I shouldn't hate myself!! I don't WANT to. I am NOT a waste. Certainly not to society; I contribute my fair share.

*sigh*

...

But here we are. Compliments in, offers turned down, lies and excuses upheld...

I'd be lying if I said saying it out loud doesn't freak me out. I'd be lying if I said writing it down, thinking it, or knowing it doesn't freak me the hell out. I want to be RIGHT... To be CORRECT... To be... Just.. natural. Normal. But I'm not.

I don't want to be a waste of a body... I don't want to be this... Wrong.

Better yet, I don't want to be PERCEIVED as wrong.

I'm so tired of it. I'm tired of being afraid of it. I'm tried of being more comfortable basically lying to those I love and trust in favor of never being rejected.. of being 'safe' psychically and emotionally. I'm so tired of them seeing this THING that's all wrong when it can be made right and could be loved just the same or even more.

I'm tired of lying without ever saying a word.

Look.. I'm nb. There we go. Easy peasy. Easy as pie. There it is. Whatever.

And damn it all if I don't Absolutely DESPISE all that word means for me and everyone else in the world who uses it. I hate saying it. I don't WANT to BE it (in the sense that I am somehow 'wrong' or 'broken' cuz I'm not). But I am.

Time and Time and Time again I reject these men.. even a few I am attracted to.. but if I were ever to tell them why.. I could die. What the fuck is wrong with them?

Luckily I have a few that don't want to kill me or be all nasty about it... But all the same literally every one of them is like 'I'll be with you before all that!!'

Dude.. seriously. No. Thank you, I'm flattered you like me as I am, but no. It doesn't work like that. You can't accept me for all I am, most definitely definitely not happening. Thank you.

More than anything, I'm just me. I generally act according to how I'm expected to because that's how I was raised and I have a fairly soft personality anyway... But I'm just me.

I'm afraid of saying it to almost everyone, but.. honestly, if there's one thing I can't wait to be when I grow up, it's being a wise-cracking old fool. I can't wait. They're my favorite people. I wanna be that when I grow up.

A soft, genuine, wise-cracking, old grandpa. Yeah. That's me.

I mean I'm a lovely young woman right now- intelligent and capable to boot- but it's just not me.. you know? It's my skin... A shell of sorts. It's totally my body, don't get me wrong, but it's not me. I'm me, and always going to be me, but people don't see it yet.

... ugh.. my head hurts XP

But oh well... At least I know my kitties will always love me. Heck I sighed while eating earlier just thinking about writing this up and apparently it was too hard. Kizzy was like *boop* immediately at my side. Got up from his sitty place in the kitchen as soon as I did and was at my side mowing, purring, and bonking me with his head. He's a smart kitty. He's a good kitty. He's my bubbies. He's also just now decided my shin is a great body pillow. Silly kitty cat XD ow. You heavy dude.

But to him I'm me. And I'm always going to be me to him. And I'm always going to be the one who gives him the best scritches and his treats and his loves.

I'm me to Whisper too. Though.. she's more of a spaz and just kinda does her own thing. She still trusts me more than anyone else in the house. I'm always going to be me to her too.

I'm me to my kitties, I love them so much, and they love me very much.

[pippytmi]

8 izwood

Daisie Villa is a nice person. A little energetic, a little wild, but nice.

 But, well-meaning as Daisie is, Pippy doesn’t understand why Daisie is here, in Pippy’s house, giving her advice about what to feed her baby. Annalise is here too, but she’s been talking to TMI in the other room about a case; Daisie, on the other hand, has made herself quite at home right next to Pippy at the kitchen table.

At first she stays quiet, watching as Pippy spoons food into Beaumont’s mouth, mostly smiling endearingly at him like everyone does. (He just has that effect). But eventually she studies the Gerber label—admittedly, a strange flavored goop of chicken and rice—and frowns.

“You know, I always thought babies shouldn’t eat these weird manufactured things,” Daisie says. “Have you tried giving him beans?”

 "Beans?“ Pippy echoes. "No, I don’t think so.”

 "See, that’s all he needs! Frijoles y arroz para ti, mijo, eh?“ Daisie says with a click of her tongue, squeezing Beaumont’s cheeks. "Just mash up normal foods really well and give them to him.”

 "We do give him other food,“ Pippy says, oddly defensive; she doesn’t want to assume Daisie thinks she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but also she doesn’t want to let the random (and unsolicited advice) bother her without saying anything. "We just don’t give him beans.”

 "I used to give Annalise beans all the time. It made her a little gassy. But she was okay,“ Daisie says, unbothered by the defensive edge to Pippy’s voice. "Is he still breastfed? You have to breastfeed him as long as possible, trust me. I kept feeding Annalise until she was a year old…how old is he now?”

 "He’s eight months,“ Pippy answers. "And he’s actually been using a bottle for a while now.”

“Ay, what a shame,” Daisie sighs. “Oh well. At least he looks healthy.”

 Pippy furrows her brow. “He is healthy, actually. And very happy too.”

 "Of course he is, he’s so chubby,“ Daisie coos. "Isn’t that right papas? You’re very chubby?”

Annalise and TMI finally come out of the living room, Annalise with a grim look on her face. “Ma, let’s go. We need to go talk to Rosie,” she says. “TMI’s going to tag along.”

“Wait, what happened?” Pippy asks. “You’re not sending my wife into anything dangerous, are you? ‘Cause she’s not allowed to die until I’m ready to.”

 "Aw, babe, that’s sort of sweet,“ TMI says, beaming even when Annalise looks between the two of them weirdly. "And also sort of morbid.”

 "Well I’m just going to drop her off at the lab, so don’t worry,“ Annalise says, grabbing her keys off the kitchen counter. "And Ma, please don’t lecture Pippy on baby food. We could hear you all the way from the living room.”

 "Lecturing, who’s lecturing? I’m just giving her advice! You’re so dramatic,“ Daisie says as she and Annalise walk out, reaching over to pinch Annalise’s cheek. "My daughter the dramatica. So when are you and Rosie going to give me grandkids?”

 "Ma.“

Their voices fade away as they leave. TMI sighs.

 "Okay, yeah, they’re going to notice if I don’t go too,” she says regretfully. “I know we said we wanted to have a movie night, but…rain check?”

“Rain check,” Pippy agrees, kissing at the edge of TMI’s mouth when she ducks down by them to fix Beau’s bib. “You go help Rosie. Beau and I will be just fine on our own.”

 "I’ll be back as soon as possible,“ TMI promises, grabbing her coat and moving to follow. She stops halfway out the room, turning to regard Pippy curiously. "Wait. What was Daisie saying?”

Pippy waves her off, flippant in one gesture. “Eh, nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“You know, I’m not sure it’s safe to just…have him in the office,” TMI says.

“Hmm?” Pippy looks up from her microscope to see what TMI is talking about, but it’s just about Beau. 

It’s true that he doesn’t have a lot of space and there is a lot of expensive equipment around him, but all he’s doing is kicking forward in his walker. It’s a miracle he even let himself be put in there; lately all he’s wanted to do is crawl.

“Beau,” TMI clarifies unnecessarily. “What if something falls?”

 "Everything’s pretty secure,“ Pippy says, but she frowns. "You’re right. Should I move him to my mom’s office? That would be safer.”

 "You know, if we hired a babysitter this would work out better,“ TMI says, already plucking Beau out of his walker.

"With what money?” Pippy scoffs. “Rosie needs to come through with a raise first.”

TMI crinkles her nose. “You’re right. Kids are expensive,” she says, hoisting Beau up on her hip. “Can you get the walker?”

 "Yeah, just give me a minute,“ Pippy says, refocusing her telescope.

 She’s so lost in her work that she doesn’t notice when Mitchie comes up. At least, not until he cheerfully calls, "Hey Pippy!”

 Pippy nearly breaks the glass slide she’s taking out. “Mitchie, can you quit doing that? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

"Whoa, sorry,” Mitchie says, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I just came by to get your tox results. I know you said you were taking over for TMI, so…”

“Oh yeah,” Pippy says, reaching past him to TMI’s desk. “Here it is.”

Mitchie takes the papers but doesn’t move to leave, instead lingering by the desk, eyeing the walker. "So you guys brought little Rosie today, huh? Nice.”

 "Ugh, don’t call him little Rosie. Rosie doesn’t need anything else to inflate his ego.“ Pippy rolls her eyes.

"Why not? It’s cute,” Mitchie says. “Where’s that little guy anyway?”

“With TMI.” Pippy slips a different glass slide under the microscope for examination, pausing when she realizes Mitchie still isn’t leaving. “You know, I like to work alone, so…”

“Oh! Right, yeah, my bad.” Mitchie takes a step back. “But hey, I’ve been researching babies a lot lately, since we’re all basically family and I’m little Rosie’s uncle now—”

“Um,” Pippy blinks, “say that again?”

Mitchie ignores her. “—and I was wondering how your insurance is going? Because I know a guy and if you guys are struggling, he can get me a great deal. And obviously you guys have started a college fund, right? I don’t see why you wouldn’t, but I figured I’d ask just in case.”

“College—? Look, Mitchie, I’m busy right now,” Pippy says. “We can revisit the college fund we don’t have later, okay?”

“You don’t have a college fund yet? Well you have to get on that! If you guys decide to have another kid it will be much harder to start setting aside money in a couple years. Plus, the stock market is just—”

“Mitchie,” Pippy cuts him off. “How many kids do you have?”

 Mitchie stops. “Uh. None? But I do have a bird, if that counts.”

“It doesn’t. Now please come back to me when you do have a kid, because then maybe I’d actually trust your input,” Pippy says, turning back around to her microscope.

“Oh I don’t know, I don’t really see myself as being a father. A cool uncle, on the other hand…”

Pippy grimaces. “We are going to revisit that uncle thing later,” she says. “But can you please let me do my job now?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. Sorry Pippy, I just get overexcited, you know how it is,” Mitchie laughs sheepishly.

“Right. Mitchie?”

“Yeah?”

 "Take Beau’s walker over to TMI for me, would you?“

TMI’s mom leaves them a voicemail about Beau.

 (Pippy deletes it before TMI can hear it too.)

"Beaumont sure moves quickly,” Donna says, eyebrow raised as she watches Beau from the kitchen table.

“Mm,” Pippy hums in agreement, sipping from her mug. “He’s very energetic.”

It’s a lazy Sunday today, having her mom over for breakfast. TMI is chasing Beau around the carpet, making sure that he doesn’t crash into the living room table or stick things into his mouth, and Pippy and Donna watch and drink coffee. It’s one of Pippy’s favorite things to do.

 "You two should consider removing the carpet,“ Donna says after a moment. "Beau needs to use his walker more.”

“He uses it all the time,” Pippy says. “At work.”

“That’s no place for a baby.” Donna swirls another spoonful of sugar into her cup nonchalantly, unaware that beside her, Pippy is biting her tongue as to not say something rude. “He needs to start building those leg muscles more. He doesn’t even crawl properly.”

“He crawls just fine,” Pippy retorts defensively. “And he’s strong, too. He’ll be walking in no time.”

Donna nods. “He’s so big already,” she says. “You’ll be up to your heads with that boy. I can tell.”

As if on cue, Beau decides to try and something into his mouth at that very moment.

“Beau! Beau, I saw that. Spit it out. Spit—” TMI sticks her finger into Beau’s mouth and fishes out a button. “I vacuumed! How do you still find things even when I vacuum?”

Donna shakes her head knowingly. “You should try limiting his crawling time,” she says. “Lord knows you and your brother gave me just as much trouble.”

“He’s young,” Pippy says instead of saying some much more choice like I’ll raise my son how I want. She knows, deep down, that her mother means well; but right now, at a time when she feels a little overwhelmed at raising a baby, it’s not as helpful as one might think.

(And besides, they’re doing pretty well, if she says so herself.)

Pippy keeps her thoughts bottled up for another week.

But it’s not until after a long, stressful night that ends with them finally getting Beau to sleep after three hours that Pippy feels angry hot tears prick at her eyes and she says,

“T, do you think we’re doing something wrong?”

TMI rolls over, half on her way to sleep already, but alert enough to pick up on the shaky edge to Pippy’s voice. “What do you mean?” she asks, quiet so they don’t wake up Beau, whose crib stands just a few feet away from their bed.

“Everyone keeps giving me advice on what to do and how to raise Beau and I’m tired,” Pippy says. “I’m tired that they think we need it.”

“We do,” TMI yawns. “They’re just trying to help, Pippy.”

“I know.” Pippy doesn’t look over at TMI, focusing instead on the ceiling, blurry as it is through her frustrated tears. “But it also feels like they’re saying we’re not good enough. And maybe we’re not.”

“Hey.” TMI slings her arm around Pippy’s waist, the weight warm and comforting, as she nudges her head against Pippy’s shoulder. “Don’t compare yourself to your mother. Or Villa’s mother. We’re definitely good enough for Beau because we love him and he loves us and that’s all we need.”

“You don’t think I’m overreacting?”

“You always overreact,” TMI says, “but it’s okay. It’s one of the things I love about you. And I know you’re just trying to protect everyone you love, but it’s okay to tell your mom you don’t need advice. She’ll understand.”

“Have you met my mother? Meddling is her middle name,” Pippy snorts. “She’ll keep on giving us advice up until Beau’s grown, trust me. And don’t get me started on Daisie, or Mitchie—”

“Mitchie doesn’t even have kids.”

“That’s what I said!”

TMI laughs into Pippy’s skin. “They love him as much as we do,” she says. “It’s sort of nice when you think about it.”

“It’s also been sort of annoying,” Pippy says, but she softens anyway, smoothing her hand over TMI’s back. “But you’re right. I’m too hung up on my own parenting skills to see that everyone’s just trying to help me out.”

“You’re doing just fine on your own, if you ask me,” TMI says drowsily, and when Pippy looks at her, her eyes are closed. “You’re the best mommy. Maybe I should get your mom to help me out instead.”

 "Good idea,“ Pippy says, smiling when TMI just hums in sleepy agreement. "I’ll redirect the complaints your way.”

(Eventually Pippy learns to appreciate the advice. But that’s not until much later, once they have their second baby on the way, because God knows how much she needs it then.)